Weather Forecast for Steamships

17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Thursday, August 29, 1912:Was real nice going to school this morning. You see it rained last night. Had our first visitors at school today. They were Miss Cakes and Miss Bryson. We had our last class, while they were there.

Recent photo of building that once housed McEwensville High School.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

It sounds like the rain the previous night broke a hot spell.

Here’s what the weather report in the New York Times for August 29, 1912 said.

The Weather

. . . Temperatures remain below the seasonal average in the Northeastern States, the region of the Great Lakes, and the Upper Mississippi Valley, and continue high in the Lower Ohio and Middle Mississippi Valleys and throughout the South. . . . .

Steamships departing Thursday for European ports will have moderate variable winds and overcast showery weather to the Grand Banks.

Cool—It’s amazing that there was a steamship forecast. How many steamships left the port of New York on a typical day? . . . How many people were on those ships? There must have been a lot or the New York Times probably wouldn’t have included the steamship forecast.

Visitors

I’m not sure who the two visitors were. Miss Bryson might possibly refer to Blanche Bryson, She was a friend of Grandma and her sister Ruth.

o, what a cute name ‘Miss Cakes’. My Aunt and I were researching family history and looked through hundreds of ship arrivals to Halifax from New York for one year (1899). That was just for one destination…so I imagine it was a busy place.